James Cameron Calls Wonder Woman “A Step Backwards”

I agreed with Cameron’s comments. I go into further detail in it in my blog on the subject, but I will try to sum up my thoughts: The recent Wonder Woman (along with the actress who played her) have been shoved in the spotlight with the crown of feminist pinned to their heads. I say, “their” because both the fictional character of Wonder Woman, along with Gal Gadot (the actress who played her) have both been hailed as feminist heroes, and unfairly so. It is a slap in the face to real women who are fighting for real change, irreverent of the male gaze while doing so. The bottom line is this: When women pick fictional characters and people playing a fictional role, we will get fictional results. Look at all the fuss over how Wonder Woman appeared in the new Justice League (JL). She wore a VERY low cut shirt, and tight pants. Several shots lingered on her bum, and breasts, as well as zoomed up her skirt for bum shots. Feminist are in an uproar, angry at the makers of JL. They feel let down by a franchise they falsely believed had offered them a female hero. I have read literal death threats on twitter willed against the directors of JL demanding their female feminist super hero be returned to them. I can only shake my head. For one, Patty Jenkin’s Wonder Woman that women rallied behind was written by a man, the same man, Zach Synder, who directed JL. That is not to say the movie was bad. The point is Wonder woman was created by man and mostly for man. The actress who plays Wonder Woman is no feminist hero, either. She has splashed herself all over lad mags such as MAXIM. This is not just a harmless magazine either. These magazines promote a rape culture, and the sexual objectification of women. This not just my opinion either. Research has showed that everyday citizens have trouble telling the difference between language used by convicted rapist and lad mags like MAXIM. Again: Women have real heroes, and we need to start celebrating them. HINT: You won’t find them nearly nude with the “fuck me” look on their face. If you want to read the full blog post: https://wordpress.com/view/thefemalegaze2017.wordpress.com

He must have a Linda Hamilton sex crush.

It’s true that Wonder Woman is beautiful–but so is Superman, and Batman. We like our movie stars to be attractive. Not a gender thing. This Wonder Woman wowed me. She’s strong, courageous and moral. She’s also beautiful. I won’t hold that against her.

James Cameron is 100% right.

I’ve grown up with Wonder Woman my entire life. She’s never been any more than Comic Book Barbie, created for the benefit of young adolescent males for their sexual fantasies, and later co-opted and marketed to little girls for the sake of selling action figures and Halloween costumes. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but she is what she is.

The cynical Hollywood execs tried spinning her and this movie as “feminist” to capitalize on Third Wave Feminism and to pat itself on the back for being progressive. Cameron called the b.s. for what it is, and rightly so.

Don’t get me wrong. People are allowed to love Wonder Woman all they want. But trying to boost her into some kind of deep feminist icon and symbol of empowerment when she’s never been anything other than one dimensional Comic Book eye candy, that’s a whole other story. People don’t even give James Bond that kind of credit, but now everyone wants to give a vapid female superhero character all this depth and nuance that she never had?

As for the snide comments about Cameron, all I can say is, as I get older, that America is becoming a place that doesn’t deserve people like him or so many other progressives like him who have worked so hard over the years to transform media for the better. Cameron was *the* director who redefined roles for women in the 1980s and 1990s. Before him, women were just dumb, helpless bimbos who hung off the action hero’s arms. After him, women would hold their own.

His Titanic taught millions of young girls all over the world that they didn’t need a man to live their lives to the fullest, at a time when all the 1990s rom coms were telling them the opposite, that their lives wouldn’t be fulfilled until they found Mr. Right.

To see Americans turn on him now like this, to paint him as The Enemy, to dismiss all the heavy lifting he’s done, to make fun of Avatar, to call him an “egotistical ass,” to write him off as a “mansplainer,” it turns my stomach because it confirms something a professor mentioned with anxiety in a Q and A with Kathleen Turner some ago. She said that she was worried to notice that the younger generation no longer seemed to understand or care about the many strides that the older generation had mad over the years. Turner was rather hopeful about it and said, “Don’t worry about it. They’re immature now. One day they’ll get it.” That Q and A was years ago, and now it looks as if the professor was right in her concerns. No one understands. No one cares.